


Hold a Whirlpool in Your Hand

by LiveAndLetRain (CaraLee)



Series: Tidepool Town [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:09:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22856770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaraLee/pseuds/LiveAndLetRain
Summary: It is a hard thing, to lose your home and your people and their ways, in some ways harder when you are still so young you have not yet learned them all yourself. But Kushina was taught how to be a princess in exile. How to hold the roar of the whirlpools in your heart and remember the secrets of the sea no matter how far inland you dwell.
Series: Tidepool Town [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643131
Comments: 10
Kudos: 42
Collections: Rain's Portfolio





	Hold a Whirlpool in Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Firecracker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13096287) by [BasicallyAnIdiot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BasicallyAnIdiot/pseuds/BasicallyAnIdiot). 



> So I wrote this almost a year ago, and then shelved it because I had no immediate plans to write anything else in the 'verse.  
> And then I wrote Team Assignment for the Umino Hours Exchange event.
> 
> The original concepts for this verse were inspired by BasicallyAnIdiot's Little Uzushio Chronicles, which I highly reccommend.

It begins with the Uminos.

Actually it begins years before that. When nine-year-old Uzumaki Kushina arrives in Konoha to be sealed as the second Jinchuuriki of the Kyuubi. An “honored guest” of the Village Hidden in the Leaf. But that is, in the grand scheme of things, not so noticeable a deviation from the expectations. Uzumaki Mito was old (though not by the standards of her clan) and needed a successor. Only an Uzumaki could hold the Kyuubi. So, of course, one had to be sent.

And so Kushina, second daughter of Uzumaki Minami who was head of the Uzumaki Clan, was taken from her home of salt-water and bright flowers and brought to live among trees of ancient wood and rustling leaves.

It is a hard thing, to lose your home and your people and their ways, in some ways harder when you are still so young you have not yet learned them all yourself. But Kushina was not alone and, in the months before the Kyūbi was sealed within her and Mito faded away, the elder woman taught her many things. Things about the Kyūbi and the seals that would hold it yes, but also how to be a princess in exile. How to hold the roar of the whirlpools in your heart and remember the secrets of the sea no matter how far inland you dwell.

And there were families. Civilians mostly, but of Uzushio all the same. (The distinction was not so stark, in their small village. Civilian and Shinobi mingled together in a way that would be unheard of in the more rigid society of Konoha.) Merchants and traders with a few Shinobi family members who carried messages between the villages. Families that cooked the same food and had the same salt-water in their veins and storms in their hearts as Kushina did. They were her people and she was theirs.

It began when Kushina came to Konoha and it continues when Uzushiogakure falls, white walls burning, blood and ash mingling on the tides.

But it really and truly begins when Uzushio jōnin Umino Kohari shows up at Konoha’s gates, her husband and young son in tow, begging asylum.

Kushina had known the Uminos. Their eldest daughter was but a year or two her junior and they had often played together in the sand when they were small. But now Kiyomi was dead, along with her middle brother and cousins, and the white sand was stained red. 

Kushina sees them, the day they have been allowed into the village. Still stunned from their losses. Kohari, worn and weary, still coated in the grime from the mission she had been on when their home was destroyed. Clutching her crying child close, Ikkaku hovering over them both, grief and pain mingled in his eyes.

Kushina gently holds little Iruka, not yet five years old, sobbing from the pain of the healing wound inflicted across his face as his father fled with him across the water, and feels her resolve harden within her. They are her people and she is theirs. She might very well be the last Uzumaki, certainly the last of the main house. They have no one else but her.

She goes home, to the small apartment she moved into upon her graduation from the Academy, and dons the white kimono embroidered with waves that her mother had sent her for her birthday only months ago. Minato watches, silent and unspeaking, understanding as he always does when it is a battle she must fight for herself as she paints her face the way Mito had taught her, the way her mother had worn it for ceremonies and occasions when she needed to stand as clan head.

And she walks, chin held high, red hair done up in Mito’s signature style, into the tower and calmly states that she is there to speak to the Hokage.

“ _Do not demand_.” Grandmother Mito's low voice echoes in her memories. “ _Because then they might deny you. Simply say it and do not give ground. Hold the storm within you and you will make your will so._ ”

Kushina has always been the storm. Wild and fierce and unstoppable. But this is different. This is the clouds on the horizon and the inevitability of what is coming. She is eighteen, jinchūriki of the nine tails, jōnin of Konohagakure, an Uzumaki of Uzushiogakure and she will not be refused. She cannot be refused. Her people are counting on her to make them a shelter.

She is a kunoichi; she is well-familiar with battle. This is no different, though the battlefield is one she has never tread upon before.

Within the hour, she stands before the council, head still high and emotions held tightly within her where they cannot touch her face, but circle like the green clouds that herald a squall. In a calm, quiet, low voice she greets the council and the hokage, and she speaks.

She reminds them of the alliance long-held between Konoha and Uzushio. An alliance of blood and marriage and friendship. She speaks of the long years of service given to Konoha by Uzumaki Mito, without whom the building of the Village Hidden in the Leaf would have been impossible. She speaks of the war, a war that, though she does not say so with words, all in the room know that Uzushio was only ever involved in because of their association with Konoha. And she speaks of her people. Skilled and powerful and gifted and now gone, except for a few survivors, scattered across the lands with nowhere to go.

It is not easy. She fights tooth and nail and painted smile for every inch she gains for her people. Two days later she stumbles, weary and worn, into the single room apartment the Uminos had received as an emergency placement, the document in hand that just might save them.

It was not the asylum that was the fight so much as the manner in which it was granted. Even the most foolish of men could see that it would be a grave mistake to turn away the shinobi of Uzushio, with their skills in seals and the sheer power they held within them. The things that had made them targets in the first place. But Kushina will not allow her people to be used and discarded. And so she fought and bargained, and now she is herself the head of more than just her clan. 

Everyone from Uzushio who comes to Konoha will be given a choice. To take the oaths required of any Konoha shinobi and civilian, and become a full citizen, renouncing all prior allegiances. Or they will swear another oath and they will be Kushina’s. Hers to lead, hers to care for. Her people, her responsibility, her bond. They will swear to do no harm to Konoha and betray no secrets, and to serve to the best of their abilities, and in return, they will be allowed to keep their culture and ways and given protection. 

The council has not yet agreed on which abandoned portion of the village to place them in, but all the rest has been decided.

Kushina explains what she has done and Kohari sweeps her up into a warm hug, Iruka tight between them. Kushina crumbles like a child, weeping into the older woman’s arms, grieving for the family she had lost years ago, and the village she had not seen in more than half a decade.

Ikkaku makes them tea, and then the three of them, (four really, Iruka trotting at his mother's side) begin to make their way across the village, taking word to those of Uzushio who already dwelt here.

The Uminos were the first, but they were not the last.

By the time Kushina has been granted the old market district, long-abandoned, in which to house her people, their numbers have grown as word spread and more came. A genin team staggers in, numb and alone, not more than thirteen years to each of their names. An Uzumaki shows up, her uncle Daiki and his apprentice, both of them seals-masters. A merchant who had been traveling between Whirlpool and Wave with her shinobi guard.

Slowly they trickle in. Battered and wounded, scattered and afraid, and Kushina throws herself into her new tasks. They have very little money, outside what those who have lived here for some time have, and so must do almost all the work of rebuilding the district they have been given themselves. Fortunately, Sakeme Yori, who has dwelt in Konoha nearly as long as Mito had, owns a small construction business and has two children and seven grandchildren, some of whom followed him into his trade. 

Daiki and Ikkaku gather those well-versed in seal-craft and work hard to train those less-skilled.

Kohari takes the task of organizing the shinobi among them and working with Konoha proper to give them classifications and ranks within the Konoha system so that they can be given missions.

And so they made themselves a home among the trees. A whirlpool disguised as a tidepool.


End file.
